


Five Times There Honestly Was Nothing Going On

by esme_green



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bets, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esme_green/pseuds/esme_green
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times there really was nothing going on between McCoy and Chapel. For velvetmouse for the 2012 <a href="http://mccoy-chapel.livejournal.com/profile"><b>mccoy_chapel</b></a> Holiday Exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times There Honestly Was Nothing Going On

* * *

"They are. I win. What's the pot up to?"

"Winner has to supply the proof. Those are the rules."

"Aside from the fact that it's been obvious for months? Today in sickbay today is my proof. In all its disgusting glory."

"Disgusting?"

"There were...bodily fluids."

 

* * *

  
**5.**

 

This was getting ridiculous, Christine thought as her digestive system forcibly hurled its contents all over her nice clean sickbay floor.

"Damn it, Chapel, you've had enough practice by now. Couldn't you avoid my shoes?" Despite the rough words, McCoy was already next to her, guiding her towards a biobed. "Still think it's the alien cucumber from that planetside reception?"

"It must be. And clearly, it wasn't a cucumber."

"At least you're not pregnant. I tested for that yesterday."

"You what? I am not pregnant!"

"I know," McCoy said, unperturbed.

"You're pregnant?" F'bxtwa, one of the near-humanoid nurses, asked as she bent to clean up the mess.

"No!"

"Because this is the third morning in a row that you've vomited, which is a symptom in humans..."

"I know! And I'm not!"

McCoy appeared to be stifling a smile, which didn't help. "I'm activating the full scan," he said. "Don't move for the next thirty seconds."

"I know the full scan protocol too," she sniped, still irritated. "Stop treating me like—"

"That means no talking," he said mildly.

"Moodiness is another symp—" began F'Bxtwa, stopping when Christine glared at her.

Thirty endless seconds passed, then McCoy grunted. "Interesting." He turned the display toward her so that she could see.

"What the hell is that?" she wondered, peering at the screen.

"Funnily enough, it's about the size of a cucumber seed. Lodged in your stomach lining. Want me to get it out?"

"Please."

He nodded. "Take off your tunic. F'bxtwa?"

Fifteen minutes later, Christine had a small, neat scar on her belly that would vanish completely within a few days, provided she was good about the dermal regenerator.

Sulu had brought up equipment from the botany lab and was dissecting the not-a-cucumber-seed under a microscope. "It looks like a pod of some kind. There are thousands of tiny spores inside. I'll have to check the biochemistry, but my guess is that it periodically expels the spores..."

"Causing the organism that ingested it to vomit." Christine made a face.

Sulu shrugged. "It makes a kind of sense as a mechanism for spore dispersal."

McCoy came back from the scrub station. "Fascinating. Get it out of my sickbay. And you—" he pointed at Christine, "—you're out of commission for the rest of the day."

"I can work."

"Heal. And in future, stay away from alien cucumber. Why the hell would you even eat such a useless—"

"Cucumber finger sandwiches," Christine said, working to look as dignified as a topless woman who'd just had gastrointestinal surgery could. "I'm a southern belle, I like refined things."

"You're from New Orleans. Stick to bourbon and gumbo."

Easing herself off the biobed, she accepted F'bxtwa's help sliding her tunic on over her head. "You have the best stock of bourbon on the ship," she said.

McCoy grunted. "And you're not getting near it until you've fully recovered."

 

* * *

 

"I see what might—might—be construed as flirtation, nothing more."

"Remember the time we beamed them back from that P Class planet?"

"Spheniscidae IV?"

 

* * *

  
**4.**

 

When the tingling began in his extremities, McCoy thought it was a last flare of his nervous system before it finally succumbed to the ice, water, and wind.

It was black inside the cocoon of insulating layers they'd hastily zipped together, and the only thing he could still definitively feel was his mouth, pressed against the hair of his now unresponsive head nurse.

When they'd first packed themselves together inside their makeshift hypothermia wrap, he'd at least been able to feel a faint heat from her breath, but now even that was gone...could have been minutes, or hours, or...oh, he was drifting...

The tingling intensified, and he could have sworn he heard the shimmer of a transporter beam, but of course that was hallucination, an ice mirage, this was his consciousness finally letting go...

And then there was yelling, and the whine of lasers, and then light, so white his eyes squeezed shut reflexively, and M'Benga's voice giving orders, and with the last of his strength, McCoy grated out, "Chapel's unresponsive," and he heard M'Benga reply that they'd take care of her, and hands were prying at him, because that's right, they'd huddled together for warmth, and his arms had locked around her a while ago, and the fuzziness crept in at the edge of his vision and he gave himself up to unconsciousness.

He awoke on a biobed, a light sheet covering him to his chest. Closing his eyes again, he listened to his breath and the beeps of the scanners for a while, digesting what his heart rate must be, eventually realizing there was another biobed scanner active as well.

Chapel, he thought, and turned his head towards the sound.

She was awake, her head turned to the side, eyes open, and she smiled when he met her gaze.

Relief flooded through him, and he watched her for a while, trying not to think about how they'd shivered together in the dark, muttering to each other to keep themselves awake, how her mumbling, trembling voice had trailed off and never come back, no matter how hard he tried to get her to respond, how he'd tucked her head into the crook of his neck to keep her brain, her beautiful brain warm, he could replace a heart or a hand but not her mind...

And she watched him too, and there was relief and worry together in her eyes, but the longer they looked at each other, the more the worry faded away.

The corner of his mouth lifted into something that might have been a half-smile, though he wasn't sure why he was smiling, but Chapel was, and yes, he supposed he was pretty pleased himself, and he opened his mouth to say so.

"YOO'RE AWAKE!" Scotty's brogue rattled through sickbay, and McCoy scowled as a half-dozen engineers tramped in, laughing and talking.

M'Benga followed them in and began running through the standard post-hypothermia checks with McCoy unobtrusively, while Scotty regaled them with the story of how he'd modified the sensors to pick up their lifesigns, then had to modify the transporter to beam up the block of ice they were encased in.

"Had to beam nearly two metric tons of ice on board to make sure we got the both of you," he said jovially. "And then slice it open with lasers like an Andorian ice-fruit."

"Glad you didn't slice us up too," McCoy ground out.

"Well, we couldn't melt you out fast enough," Scotty said, oblivious to McCoy's mood. "Though Plan B was to modify a wave generator to smash the ice with a sonic beam." He paused. "But the trouble with sonic is fine-tuning the control. One miscalculation and we'd have a doctor smoothie on our hands, because human flesh would just—"

"Scotty, you're a genius," came Kirk's voice, not a moment too soon as it saved McCoy from getting off his bed and punching the chief engineer.

"So he's been telling us," he settled for.

"And the Spheniscidaens are grateful for the quick thinking and actions you and Nurse Chapel took to ensure that last clutch of eggs on the nursery ice floe was safe. They want to give you both an award and banquet."

McCoy winced. "On the ice planet?"

"Well, they can't really survive on board at a temperature comfortable for us," Kirk said. "And—ah, here it is—they sent this for Nurse Chapel."

Yeoman Rand trotted in carrying what looked like a large bear but which turned out to be a white fur blanket-type thing that she helped Chapel wrap around herself.

"It is warm," Chapel admitted, the pale pink of her cheek nestling into the soft white fur, her blue eyes sparkling, and McCoy knew he was going to be beaming down to that damned planet one more time.

* * *

"Your 'evidence' went from possible pregnancy to...just looking at each other?"

"Everyone was talking about that *look* he was giving her. And the scientific term is copulatory gaze."

"Have you checked the definition of 'scientific', lately?"

"Ha. For all we know they're dating right under our noses. You know they eat together all the time."

* * *

  
**3.**

 

Christine had learned quickly that the trick to handling McCoy was to soften him up. He was a simple man; it wasn't hard to do. You just needed to pick your moment. And your weapon.

Christine had primed hers and carried it with studied nonchalance into his office.

"Chapel, you're in early," he said, barely glancing up from his paperwork.

"I brought you something," she said, and laid her weapon down on the desk in front of him.

"Oh dear God, is that—" He inhaled the warm scent of buttery pastry and sweet cherries.

"Enjoy," she said with a smile.

"I will." He reached for the plate and then hesitated. "I can't eat this in front of you."

"I made more than one," she said, pulling two forks and another cherry tart out of her carryall.

The look on his face when he took his first bite was worth all the trouble she'd taken to get the ingredients, and they spent ten minutes in laughing conversation as they ate.

It was only when he pushed his empty plate away that he said, "What do you want?"

"It's Nurse Simpson's birthday, and..."

"...and you want to keep the rest of those devil-treats in here, in my office, which means people will be in and out the whole day, making noise, disturbing my work..."

"I can't leave them around patients or in the lab."

"Not again, no. You'd think trained medical professionals wouldn't—"

"But they did, so..."

"Fine," McCoy grunted, and Chapel smiled. "But you owe me."

Chapel's smile widened as she reached into her carryall again. "For later," she said, setting another container down in front of him.

Deliberately she turned away before he opened it, ignoring his muffled exclamation in favour of setting up her stand of cherry tarts on one of his cabinets so that the rest of the staff would be able to come in and help themselves.

"You're pricing yourself out of the market, Chapel," McCoy said around a mouthful of praline cookie. "If you're going to bake every time one of the staff has a birthday..."

Christine slung her carryall over her shoulder and glanced back at him. "Those cookies better last you a while, Doctor," she told him, and went out to give Simpson his present.

* * *

"She always bakes something special for him!"

"It's a harmless way to bribe your supervisor, nothing more. Speaking of which, do you think she would make something for my birthd—"

"No."

"Fine. See if I care."

"I'm not done yet. What about that time we had to evacuate Starbase 9?"

 

* * *

  
**2.**

 

McCoy had decided that the problem with black stars was that space was black too, which meant it was damn difficult to see when one was getting up to shenanigans.

Spock had rambled on about transitional phases between collapsing stars and true singularities, but it amounted to the same thing: the ship was packed to the rafters with refugees from the crunched-up hunk of metal that had been Starbase 9.

Since the Enterprise's emergency beam-out pulled the last personnel aboard mere seconds before the base's outer hull finally gave way, Sickbay was similarly packed with injuries, from broken bones to acute hypoxia and everything in between.

A few hours in, Chapel stuck her head into the surgical bay. "I'm activating the emergency staffing protocol," she said.

McCoy didn't bother looking up from his patient. "Agreed." He treated two more major trauma cases, three spinal injuries, and Jim Kirk's broken arm.

"How were you even on the Starbase?" he asked Kirk with the resignation of long practice.

"I don't want to talk about it," Kirk said tersely, which meant it was going to be the kind of story McCoy found hilarious.

When he caught sight of his head nurse again, she was roving through the masses waiting for triage, medical tricorder in one hand, dermal regenerator in the other, treating all the burns she could see.

"This patient next, Doctor," she said, strong-arming him away from his intended destination.

His instinct to argue died when he saw why she'd stopped him.

"Good catch, Chapel," he said, eyes flicking over her scan. "Hand over triage to F'Bxtwa and assist on this one."

"I'm fine," the patient said woozily, trying to stand.

"You've got a slow internal bleed coupled with Tellurian haemophilia. Believe me, you're not."

"Is that like what my mother had?" the patient asked, then promptly passed out.

Chapel caught him, and together they hoisted him and made for the surgical bay.

Because he wasn't selfish, he sent Chapel back out to triage after the surgery was complete. Standing in front of an operating table seemed to be a sign to his team, though, as another patient was wheeled in as soon as the Tellurian was taken away.

Hours and patients passed in a blur. McCoy focused on what was in front of him, knowing each time he held out a hand for an instrument it would be there, even if the person assisting him changed. Occasionally he caught a flash of blonde hair, sometimes beside him, more often darting around beyond the glass separating him from the rest of sickbay.

Thirty-seven surgical procedures later Chapel was beside him again for a particularly tricky nerve-knitting which kept them silent and focused for nearly half an hour.

"I'll close," he said when they finished. She nodded and vanished and when he looked up again, he realized that there was no one else to tend. Doing a final check on the patient's vitals, he wheeled the biobed out and looked around.

The lights were dimmed for gamma shift and other than sleeping patients, there were just two medics, conferring quietly in a corner.

"How long have you been on duty, ensigns?"

"We just came back, sir," one of them said, while the other took charge of his patient. "Nurse Chapel sent us to sleep six hours ago, so we're set for the night."

"Good." He nodded. "I'll be in my office if you need anything."

The first thing he saw as he entered was a steaming mug on his desk.

"Drink it," said his head nurse, who was sipping her own mug from his couch.

He picked up what turned out to be hot, nourishing soup and sat down next to her. "You should get some sleep."

"There are three rescued personnel sharing my cabin with me right now," she said.

"They crammed five into mine," he said. "Not exactly a restful proposition."

She sighed. "I'll go in a bit, it's just..."

"Drink your soup," he told her, using his last remaining energy to stand again and haul over a small storage bin. "Here, put your feet up."

With a heartfelt groan, she did so, and she looked so comfortable, her head dropped against the back of the couch, that he joined her there, his arm brushing hers as he leaned back and put his feet up too.

"You're the best damn surgical nurse I've ever had," he said, a propos of nothing.

She turned to him, eyebrows faintly raised.

He shrugged. He'd been thinking it; it needed to be said. "Talk to me again in four hours," he told her, and drained his mug.

"Deal," she replied, her head falling back against the couch, her eyes fluttering closed.

And then he fell into a dreamless sleep.

 

* * *

"They were still asleep together when the next shift came in!"

"Fully clothed?"

"Yes."

"With the door open?"

"Yes."

"Not...spooning or anything?"

"No." She pouted.

He gave her his best patronizing smile, and started walking his fingers up over her smooth shoulder. "So you're saying that two co-workers who spent eighteen straight hours on their feet dealing with a medical crisis were not grabbing what little sleep they could get, they were undressing, having sex, getting dressed again, and then dozing off barely touching each other?"

"Apparently they looked...comfortable together."

"They've known each other since the Academy."

"I can't believe this is still up for debate. They actually got married that one time!"

* * *

  
**1.**

 

Chapel arrived on the bridge to the sound of McCoy arguing with anyone in the vicinity.

"Sorry, Doctor, they won't bend on this," said Uhura, pulling out her earpiece.

Spock nodded. "Not surprising, Lieutenant. The Gemallins have strict taboos. Only married people are allowed to interact with those participating in a mating migration."

"I used to be married, damn it," said McCoy. "Doesn't that count?"

Chapel waited unobtrusively until the captain and Commander Spock finished subtly poking fun at him. Eventually she was beckoned over and asked for her report.

"M'Benga, Simpson, and F'bxtwa are preparing for transport, and there are another three married crew members with advanced field medic training we could use as well."

McCoy glared at Kirk and Spock. "That won't be enough. They need a second surgeon, damn it. Send me down!"

"Sending down somone who isn't currently married would exacerbate the situation," Spock. "The Gemallins are empaths. During the mating migration, their natural mental shielding is impaired, and thus they must be surrounded by the simpatico of minds used to regular, intimate contact. Those without a life partner don't meet that requirement."

"Like hell they don't." McCoy scowled. "We aren't empaths."

Chapel spoke up. "Commander, Doctor McCoy and I work together on a daily basis. We spend more time in close quarters than many married couples. Is it possible our minds exhibit the simpatico the empaths require?"

The tall Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "An interesting hypothesis, Lieutenant." He paused, his generous mouth pursed in thought, not that she was staring at his lips. "From my observations of your interactions over the past ten months, I concur that you and Doctor McCoy do deal well together. It's possible you may indeed meet the empathic requirement."

She flushed with pleasure at his endorsement.

"However," he continued, "the Gemallin taboo is quite specific. You and Doctor McCoy are not, in fact, married."

"That's easy enough," McCoy interjected from behind her. "Chapel, will you marry me?"

She whipped around so fast she felt her brain knock against the inside of her skull. But there was her CO, scowling as usual, and for a moment she just stared at him before bursting out in helpless laughter. "Sure," she said, shaking her head.

"Smooth talker," said the Captain. "Commander Spock, would that satisfy all concerns?"

Spock took a moment to consider, which unfortunately gave Chapel time to realize that the entire bridge crew had stopped working and were unabashedly gawking at them. Even the normally unflappable Uhura was staring, her mouth hanging open.

She felt her cheeks heat again, and forced herself to listen to what Commander Spock was saying.

"...believe this would indeed meet the Gemallin requirements."

"All right," the Captain said. "Yeoman?"

Rand appeared at his side. "Yes, sir," she said, tapping at her padd.

"There must be paperwork for this."

"Yes, sir. Sign here."

"That was a little too quick," the Captain commented as he scrawled a signature and passed the padd to McCoy.

"As long as getting un-married happens just as quickly," McCoy said gruffly.

"I'll have the form ready when you beam back," Rand promised.

"Well, hold on." Chapel couldn't help but snicker at her CO's expression as she took the padd from him to sign. "If he doesn't make it back alive, this means I get his bourbon, right?"

The Captain grinned. "Bones, you made a good choice."

McCoy grabbed the padd out of her hands and pushed it back towards Rand. "We're going,"he said, putting his hand on Chapel's elbow to guide her toward the turbolift.

"A moment, Doctor," said Spock, coming over to them. He surveyed them both, eyes resting briefly on where McCoy's hand lay on Chapel's arm. "Good," he said. "As neither of you are telepaths, you will not be able to consciously project a, for lack of a better term, 'married' emotional state. I recommend that you touch frequently to reinforce your natural collegial bond."

"I'll hold her hand whenever she's not using it for patient care," McCoy growled.

"Thank you, Commander," said Chapel, pushing her new husband towards the turbolift. "We will endeavour to take your advice."

She could swear she heard a mumbled comment about managing females, which she decided to ignore.

Already, this marriage was pretty much like any other.

 

* * *

  
**And the rest...**

 

 

"Did they not fill out the paperwork to dissolve the marriage as soon as they possibly could?"

"Once Christine regained consciousness," she said sourly.

"And wasn't that months and months ago, anyway?"

"Yes."

"Janice." He cupped her cheek, "You two are friends. Why don't you just ask her?"

"You really don't know much about women," she told him.

"I won't argue with that."

"You think she's just dying to spill? That we're going to sit around, braiding each other's hair, eating half-melted ice cream—"

"You're both wearing skimpy nightgowns in this scenario, ri—oof!"

"—and gossiping about our boyfriends?"

"I assumed that was what women do," he said blandly.

Her eyes narrowed. "This isn't about friendship. This is is about money."

"So I'm beginning to understand."

"What do you need to pay out the bet?"

"Incontrovertible evidence. Preferably in front of witnesses."

She pulled away from him. "They'll never be that indiscreet."

"Stranger things have happened," he said.

Janice was frowning, though. "What about...evidence that they're spending their sleep shifts in the same cabin."

"Still circum—"

"Repeatedly. Repeated nights together."

"That might work, if you can demonstrate a pattern. Crew whereabouts are common knowledge; you could ask the computer to sample data every half-hour..."

"Over the course of two to three weeks, that could..." She stopped. "Why are you smiling?"

He let his grin widen.

"You've already done that!"

"My bet said two months ago. I thought of everything."

Janice pounced on him, which, given she was naked, he absolutely didn't mind. "But that was two months ago! Anything could have happened since then."

Catching her hands, he rolled her under him. "Sorry. I kept the subroutine running, now I'm managing the betting pool."

"And there's no evidence they're spending their nights in each other's cabins."

"None whatsoever."

"You wouldn't lie about this?"

"That sounds like nothing I'd do."

The look she was giving him changed subtly.

"Not to you," he amended. "I'll show you the data in the morning."

"Fine." She slumped back, and he decided to let her talk while he nuzzled her neck. "So they're not."

"You'll think of something," he assured her, letting his lips trace her collarbone and then drift down to the dove-soft skin below.

Predictably, once he reached his next destination on her body, she completely lost her train of thought.

******

An hour later, he left her sleeping, pulled on a pair of track pants, and eased out of his quarters and down the hall.

Using his override he let himself in another door and waited in the darkened room, listening.

There it was...the rustling of bedclothes, followed by a whispered, "Damn it, Jim."

McCoy came out from behind his sleeping partition wearing only a blanket around his waist.

"Sorry," Jim whispered.

"We'll talk outside." McCoy grabbed his shoulder and pushed.

"Janice is getting close," Jim said once they were both blinking in the light of the corridor. "I'm going to have to mock up a subroutine and a few fake months of data to show where you both have been sleeping."

McCoy scowled. "You're not falsifying records for me, damn it, I'll—"

"I'm not touching the actual ship sensor logs, that would be stupid. I'm just creating a simulation that will look to her like I'm accessing—"

"If I say you're a genius, can I go back to bed?"

"Just giving you the heads up, Bones. People are starting to talk. Be careful."

"Rumours about the two of us arguing half-naked in the middle of the night should help," McCoy said dryly as a group of crewmen walked by.

Jim grinned and began jogging backwards towards his quarters. "That offer still stands!"

 

* * *

McCoy slipped back into his cabin and made his way carefully back over to the bed.

"Everything all right?" Christine asked sleepily.

"Jim felt the need to tell me about his latest brilliant plan to keep Janice from finding out about us," he said, climbing in beside her.

She chuckled. "She knew I'd placed a bet on her love life and deliberately didn't say anything until after my guess expired in the pool. The bitch has to pay."

McCoy could have pointed out that absolutely no one had had a chance of collecting on that particular bet. Instead he pulled her long, supple body towards him,which made conversation immaterial from his point of view. "Just make Jim look like the hero who finds the tiny clue that unravels our massive web of deception."

"You're enjoying this too," she accused him, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek.

McCoy settled her more comfortably in his arms. "Not a chance," he said. "Go back to sleep."

 

 

END

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Praline cookies](http://www.southernliving.com/food/holidays-occasions/best-cookies-recipes-00400000057478/page20.html)!


End file.
